Life Update

[jeriendhal]

Family: We took Georgia out to the Chuck E. Cheeze in Frederick for a meet up with three other families that adopted from the same orphanage. She had a blast and Thomas was reasonably well behaved. Though I am coming to the conclusion that the Chinese government tends to, ahem, shade the truth a tad when they're matching orphans to families. I thought it was a rather amazing coincidence when Georgia just happened to have the same birthday as me, and thought she was rather big for her age when we got her. This pales however, to the one young lady who was adopted at the tender age of twelve last year, and looks a whole lot more like sixteen. Her parents aren't complaining, and it actually doe help her with cathing up in school, but it was still a rotten thing to do.

Oh, and when did Chuckie's get rid of the creepy animatronic performers? I missed 'em.


Nano: I've still got a chapter or so to write on this story, but I'm burned out from my big push towards the end, so I'm letting it lie for a bit. Looking back what I've written, I can see I basically chopped out a big section of what should have been Nafir training at the Council Island and bonding with Shaffa and Chizoba. I could easily add at least a third to the book in that section alone. Meanwhile, while the primary crisis is resolved the plot certainly isn't. There's an investigation to be had to find The Man behind Lord Gacheru, Shaffa's Mysterious PAst (tm) to be relvealed, and maybe this time around I should actually think of the plot if that tale before I start writing.

Comments

[chaypeta.livejournal.com]

But it is so much fun to just make it up as you go along. (Says the planning freak.) I get the impression that you have Shaffa's back story pretty much mapped out. That leaves just working out a way to complicate it with his present life. Alls types of evil to be had there.

And yup. I think the nano turned out to be a teaser prequel to the main story about the dragons and their increased interest in screwing stuff up for the three races and how in turn that is going to screw up Nafir and his team mates mates lives.

I don't get the Chinese government at all. What is the point really of not being honest with the records. At least Georgia was in relatively good health. (thank heavens) We had one horror story... abett years ago where a couple here was stung thousands of extra dollars to fund the standard of care their future daughter was getting pre adoption. When they finally got custody of her she had been so badly neglected she went straight from the plane to Aus. into an ambulance to the Royal Childrens for three weeks.

[jeriendhal.livejournal.com]

Shaffa is the one thing I am sure about in this story. I know what happened to him before and what will be happening when eventually returns home. Figures the one character with the maximum amount of angst is the one I pay attention to the most.

Aside from the wierdness with Georgia's birthday, we were treated fairly straight by the Chinese government. Of course we also had the advantage of seeing what she was like before we got her. One set of parents visiting the orphanage after picking up their daughter, and Geogia managed to insert herself in every shot while their were taking vids. The little camera hound. :)

[eric-hinkle.livejournal.com]

Good luck with the writing! And you can adopt children from (I'm assuming) mainland China? I'm surprised. I thought that they'd be against seeing their kids get raised by foreigners.

That and I'm wondering just kind of bureaucratic hoops you have to leap through; I know a couple that adopted a child here in the USA and it was a nightmare going through the paperwork.

[jeriendhal.livejournal.com]

Adoption from China became big a few years back when they realized the consequences of their One Child population reduction strategy. Culturally, Chinese families favor having boys, because the sons take care of their parents in their old age. So if a woman had a girl, they had a nasty habit of serendipitously dumping them (illegal but it was a nudge-nudge wink-wink matter) near police stations to be picked up and sent to an orphanage.

So they had a big supply of girls taking up space in orphanages and no one who wanted them locally. So China very deliberately created a streamlined overseas adoption process, cutting it down to about 18 months (in theory) and requiring only a single overseas trip to pick up the child. It worked out nicely. They got rid of their unwanted kids, got a nice amount of foreign currency, and the parents got a child without having to wade through a buttload of state regulations.

By the time we got to adopting Georgia, things were changing. Locally, the Chinese government, realizing that it was rather embarrassing that all these foreigners were snapping up their daughters, tightened the requirements for adoptive parents and started a campaign to encourage domestic adoption. Nowadays counting paper chasing and the waiting list, it can take more on the order of four or five years to get a child from there.

[eric-hinkle.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the explanation. It's good that you were able to get Georgia with (hopefully) a minimum of bureacratic silliness.

[mjkj.livejournal.com]

Wow, that is not nice...

...changing her birthday like that...

And yayy for NaNo - take your time to finish it :)

*looking forward to the whole story*

mjkj